Embrace of the Serpent | Little White Lies

Embrace of the Serpent

08 Jun 2016 / Released: 10 Jun 2016

Words by Matt Thrift

Directed by Ciro Guerra

Starring Antonio Bolivar, Jan Bijvoet, and Nilbio Torres

Man standing in water, wearing traditional jewellery and holding a weapon. Black and white image.
Man standing in water, wearing traditional jewellery and holding a weapon. Black and white image.
4

Anticipation.

Ciro Guerra’s first two features were terrific.

4

Enjoyment.

This was never going to win the Oscar.

4

In Retrospect.

An exquisitely rendered study of colonialism, memory and cultural erasure.

Ciro Guerra’s psy­che­del­ic Ama­zon­ian odyssey is one of year’s most potent and strik­ing­ly orig­i­nal films.

Colo­nial­ism and mem­o­ry serve as the twin forces steadi­ly eras­ing an entire cul­tur­al her­itage on this slow-burn jour­ney down the Ama­zon. It’s a film preg­nant with mys­ti­cal sym­bol­ism. And its com­plex struc­ture ends up being the key to deci­pher­ing its mean­ing. Direc­tor Ciro Guer­ra weaves togeth­er two nar­ra­tives, one from the turn of the 20th cen­tu­ry, the oth­er tak­ing place some 40 years lat­er; each is a fic­tion­alised account of a search by a pair of real-life Ger­man ethno­g­ra­phers for the film’s elu­sive MacGuf­fin, the yakruna plant, said to pos­sess hal­lu­cino­genic properties.

Unit­ing the two nar­ra­tive strands is a char­ac­ter slow­ly revealed as our guide, Kara­makate, seem­ing­ly the last sur­viv­ing mem­ber of the Cohi­uano tribe. Kara­makate is played by two actors – as a young and old­er man. His pres­ence bridges the two eras with an unre­li­able sub­jec­tiv­i­ty. He looks down on the west­ern white men in his com­pa­ny, fail­ing to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between them. He is what he refers to as a Chul­lachaqui,” a spec­tre of his for­mer self. We all have one,” he says. It looks like you, but is emp­ty, hol­low, a ghost with­out time.”

With the help of screen­writer Jacques Toule­monde Vidal, Guer­ra crafts a rich the­mat­ic alle­go­ry on the effects of colo­nial­ism. It takes the form of a ser­pen­tine dance through time, sound­ing a series of echoes beyond the imme­di­ate hor­rors borne of its Con­ra­di­an heart of dark­ness. And hor­rors there are plen­ty, not least in scenes at an orphan­age pop­u­lat­ed by sadis­tic mis­sion­ar­ies and a Colonel Kurtz-like dem­a­gogue in each respec­tive time­frame. Guerra’s move­ment between eras (in one stun­ning instance, with­out the use of a cut) expos­es the fes­ter­ing wounds of colonialism.

David Gallego’s rich, mono­chrome Super 35 cin­e­matog­ra­phy accen­tu­ates the oppres­sive and the beau­ti­ful. Open spaces take on a claus­tro­pho­bic qual­i­ty, height­ened by Karamakate’s increas­ing dis­con­nec­tion. If, on occa­sion, the screen­play spells out its the­mat­ic motifs, as in an episode with a miss­ing com­pass (“You can­not for­bid them to learn!”) or a trad­ing of cre­ation myths (fea­tur­ing Haydn’s, um, Cre­ation’), Guer­ra con­tin­u­al­ly leads with his images. An extra­or­di­nary open­ing cred­it sequence of a snake feast­ing on its young is impos­si­bly bet­tered by a late, sub­tex­tu­al­ly-weight­ed jaguar ver­sus ser­pent attack.

Yet what takes hold long after the cred­its have rolled is a final sequence at the end of the expe­di­tion. The dis­cov­ery of the last yakruna plant, shared with the lat­er explor­er, explodes into a meta­phys­i­cal kalei­do­scope of colour, its mind-expand­ing irrup­tions chan­nelling the star­gate set piece at the end of Stan­ley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Where that film’s worm­hole chart­ed a course through the fold­ed fab­ric of space to ques­tion the affects of the extra-on the ter­res­tri­al, Guer­ra pulls off a coup that bears the weight of com­par­i­son well.

Punch­ing a hole between its twin points in time, the film lays bare the destruc­tive force of mod­ern man on his envi­ron­ment. Nature itself final­ly offers up a vision of enlight­en­ment, albeit one that’s too late for salvation.

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